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I Don't Have Usable Ditchlights

Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019 is a 2018/2019 train simulation computer game made by N 3 V Games, which is known for their Trainz Simulator franchise. It was put in early access on July of 2018. It officially launched on January 7th, 2019. It is notably the first Trainz Simulator game to feature the "Trainz Railroad Simulator" moniker since the Trainz Railroad Simulator 2007 release, mostly to avoid confusion of the game with Dovetail Game's Train Simulator which makes a lot of sense. Unlike Trainz: A New Era, Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019 has an optional subscription. The subscription allows subscribers, based on the memberships said players subscribed to, access all current dlcs, all future and wip dlcs, faster downloading speeds in-game, double or triple the trainz points earned when purchasing content from the Trainz Store, and up to 25% off of all items on the Trainz Store. It can be purchased on the Steam store or Trainz Store (prices vary).


Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019 provides examples of:

  • Artificial Brilliance: Unlike previous Trainz installments, AI in Trainz 2019 follow commands a lot more accurately and get confused less.
    • If you give a consist (with a locomotive) a "Navigate To" command and set any humptower as the destination, the AI train will travel to the humpyard, and actually use it, though whether or not the AI train is aware it is using a humptower is not known. The "Repeat Schedule" command seems to have it continuously use the humptower.
  • Artificial Stupidity: At the same token, AI can be quite the hassle at times. Sometimes they get stuck while attempting to complete a given command. It usually has to do with the path they're taking to complete that command. For example, when a rollingstock car (like a boxcar) occupies a track, the AI train may struggle with coupling to it because it's causing a red signal on the AI train's end. AI trains can't go past red signals just like real engineers can't proceed past them. But they can't actually request permission to pass at danger (though the player can't request to pass at danger either) so the AI train gets stuck at the red signal as a result. This is pretty common which is why you are better off coupling a loco to a consist yourself and then give the train a command so less time is wasted. Practically every single form of Artificial Stupidity in this video game will make you wish there was more Developer's Foresight.
    • Without railroad signals, all AI trains will just carelessly run into each other or proceed to drive off of tracks with no buffer on them, causing unnecessary derailments that should have been prevented. In fact, most locomotives in real life have computers that monitor the tracks and activate the set the locomotive's brakes into emergency when a track is missing or the locomotive is nearing collision with another locomotive. This includes many Amtrak locomotives.
    • AI trains do not use their horns and bells when they should. In other words you have to give them a freaking command for them just to use their horns which is just plain stupid and unsafe in real life. But Dovetail Games is no different because surprisingly they don't program AI trains to blast horns or ring their bells either.
    • Railroad crossings can sometimes malfunction or work incorrectly if they're not set up properly with the ATLS versions being the most well known for malfunctioning if set up is not correct. This often leads to hilarious moments when railfanning or just playing with the route in general and can even lead to Nothing Is Scarier when the crossings don't activate as a train is coming or stop activating while the train is passing... or just outright activates for no freaking reason other than to piss off the traffic that happens to be approaching the crossing, stop, and beep their horns 100 times after obviously seeing that no train is coming or even scare the living daylights out of the poor traffic.
    • Just imagine an AI train taking the wrong path or even taking the most ridiculous, absurd, or longest fucking path just to couple to a gondola you commanded it to couple to... Good God N 3 V Games! How long does it take for an AI train to realize it could have made it's job much easier if it had taken Path A instead of Path B? Oh and the AI trains don't give two cents either.
    • Sometimes an AI Train will just purposefully screw you over, no matter how simple the command you gave it really was.
    • Usually whenever a driver stops at a railroad grade crossing, the driver won't beep his/her horn regardless of the reason... unless another driver, pedestrian, or an animal gets impatient enough that they decide ramming into the train will make it pass faster or they're not paying attention which in that case, someone damn well better honk their horn. Or a bunch of other reasons we're not going to get into However traffic in this game takes Big Honking Traffic Jam up to eleven. All road vehicles do it, despite the obvious fact that beeping their horns isn't making the train pass by any faster. And even if traffic isn't anywhere near a railroad crossing, all road vehicles will still beep their horns no matter what! Trust me people, the automobiles in the game are always that impatient!
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Trainz 2019 is full of them. The most recent being the ability to switch between surveyor mode and driver mode which no known previous Trainz game has ever had before. You must have the gold membership for this feature though.
    • Apparently, if you don't feel like downloading every single individual dependency or asset for one whole asset, then you can use the ctrl key and press a to select all assets and download them altogether, reducing the amount of time you have to spend downloading each individual asset. This is not recommended if you have about 10 assets left.
    • If you're in content manager and an asset is marked as "Obsolete" you can update it by right clicking it and clicking the "asset versions" tab thing which will bring you a small (or sometimes large) list of versions of the asset. But it's pretty rare to find any asset that's not obsolete or has an available updated version that you can download.
    • Instead of having to do all the extracting and whatnot like you have to do in all of Dovetail Game's Railworks games just to be able to use 3rd party trains, rollingstock, or even simple reskins, you can just import .cdp files into the game and you'll have your train, rollingstock, scenery item, and what have you in less than 5 minutes. Of course you had better have a first class ticket if you want to download those cdp files faster.
    • You can always lower the settings if you feel the lag is unbearable, but it works pretty well with potatoes.
    • Reskinning a locomotive or rollingstock is fairly easier than in Railworks. Of course you'll still need the Trainz Wiki's guide if it's your first time reskinning.
    • The download station has a much larger selection of 3rd party content than it did in Trainz: A New Era and Trainz Simulator 12. Additionally, many items in the DLS are usually good quality.
    • Many of the DLCS are in impressive quality, but paying for all of them just to have access is literally an Ass Pull, but you can subscribe to the Gold membership and download every damn dlc in for the game for free. The first class ticket, silver membership, and gold membership are generously cheap for one month. The yearly prices however, are a different story... Regarding that, they're pretty worth the money when you're getting free dlcs to play around with compared to Dovetail Game's dlcs which are overly priced and don't even offer any membership options that allow players to try dlc before they actually decide to buy it.
    • If you have the ATSF T:ANE GP 38-2 2 Pack and don't feel like fuel priming the locomotives to start them, you can always ctrl + right click on the locomotives and start them up using the "Start up" command. The fuel primer is really just for show and doesn't actually start up the locomotive, as it's only purpose is to make it look as authentically realistic and detailed as possible. The same applies to the BNSF GP 38-2 Pumpkins 2 pack dlc in which the BNSF GP 38-2s also start in the same manner since they are technically the same locomotive model.
    • If you're making a consist, but you keep forgetting how you made it or removed it from the 3D world by accident, you can always save the consist, so you don't have to keep remembering how you made it. That way, you can just place it in the 3D world with ease.
    • If you don't like the horn of a locomotive, you can replace it with another horn to make it sound more impressive or enjoyable to hear. This of course is not simple unless you have muscle memory, but it's not too complicated. The same goes for the lights on a loco. The same thing can be done with rollingstock sounds.
    • If a route is missing dependencies and you're too lazy to download all of them individually, what you CAN do is right click on the route in the content manager and click on download. You're not redownloading the route however, you're actually downloading all the missing dependencies the route has. The same can be done with any other assets missing dependencies.
    • You can import entire folders (so long as they have cdp files) into the content manager, basically installing 3rd party assets all at once. They'll still download one at a time though.
    • Assets are known for missing independencies at times, but you can right click on an asset and click on "list independencies" and a list of all required independencies will be presented to you, and any that are not installed will be highlighted in red.
    • If realistic driving mode is too difficult for you, you can switch to a more simple DCC driving mode or even just give the driver a command to to your work for you. This can be done by clicking on the three dots in the lower right corner of your pc screen.
    • As long as a route isn't payware (an asset that has been purchased or is purchasable) you can combine routes to make a much larger route. You cannot rotate the route that you are merging with your current route however.
    • You can give locomotives commands and they will (for the most part) follow them.
  • But Thou Must!: You want faster download speeds for your dlcs and stuff from the download station? You want to play with Anti-Frustration Features locked behind a paywall? You want to have all of those awesome dlcs to yourself without forking over all of your hard earned paychecks to acquire and own them? Well, you have to fork over cash for a paid memebership to have access to all that stuff, including the dlcs you don't want to pay for.
  • Cars Without Tires Are Trains: Averted. Drivable vehicles are not only able to be driven on the road, they can be driven on the freaking railroad tracks. There are a few drivable vehicles however, that can operate on railroad tracks and roads.
  • Cool Train: Various dlc locomotives are absolutely impressive and almost fully functioning models of their real life counterparts.
    • The Trainz 2019 DLC ATSF GP 38-2 Santa Fe (2-pack) and Trainz 2019 DLC BNSF GP 38-2 Pumpkins (2-Pack) dlcs are arguably the best dlc locomotives money can buy. Not only do they behave similarly to their real life counterparts, they also have awesome horns and their textures are taken up to eleven in terms of authenticity.
    • The Burlington Northern GP 50 dlc is pretty notable. It's one of two GP 50 dlcs you can actually buy or gain access to using a silver or gold membership and via the Steam and Trainz stores.
    • Most G Ps in general are pretty chill if you really enjoy old school railfanning. While many of them have almost the same horns, changing the horns isn't necessarily a huge problem if you're looking for a more appropriate fitting for the locomotives.
    • To many railfans and engineers alike, the CSX GP 38-2s will always stand out since they're pretty iconic in many train simulation games. Some of them have different horns and skins. Throw some CSXT rolling stock in, and you can turn a route into a fictional CSXT route complete with old school motive power.
    • The Tidewater Point Railroad (now Tidewater Point Railroad 2.0) has a few locomotives that you can play around with. It even comes with a C39-8.
    • 99% of the time, most cool trains that appear in any N 3 V Games Trainz Simulator game, come directly from Jointed Rail or R Rmods. Both websites have crisp and pristine content, but R Rmods by far has the best content.
    • The BN GP 5 is an undeniably cute switcher locomotive in the Legacy of The Burlington Northern V2 route. It comes with a cute horn and an impressive design. While G P5s have been long gone, it will remind any train lover that the good old days still exist on this computer game.
    • The BN SD 7 (both low hood and High Hood) is a remarkable locomotive if you're looking to add S D7s to you collection. But it's a Burlington Northern SD 7. Where else could you find a BN SD 7 in such high quality?... apart from Jointed Rail and possibly R Rmods.
    • G P9s are probably the hardest locos to come by in the game. Especially since there aren't really any dlcs that contain any, apart from some routes which may have a shortline GP 9. Of course if you really crave G P9s, you can fork over $14.99 to Jointed Rail for some High Quality G P9s of varying railroad companies.
    • The Nickel Plate High Speed dlc brings back good ol' Pere Marquette and Nickel Plate Road in awesome style. You get two versions of a Nickel Plate Road steam locomotive and one version of a Pere Marquette locomotive. Those who love Pere Marquette 1225 and Nickel Plate Road 765 will literally enjoy these dlc locos. Sadly there's no Nickel Plate Road 587 locomotive nor do either of the two NKP locos come with it's whistle.
    • Unfortunately, many famous locomotives like Western Maryland 734, Norfolk And Western 611, and even ATSF F45 Locomotives aren't available as dlcs. You can only find those on 3rd party websites or in the download station.
  • High-Speed Train Reroute: Averted. You can't change any junctions whatsoever when a locomotive or rolling stock is too close to them or is going too fast. It is most likely an Anti-Frustration Feature so as to prevent derailments or simulate accuracy as in real life most switches are automatically controlled except for some abandoned or rarely used lines which may still contain manual junction levers. That means your train, it's passengers, crew, and freight, are screwed if you didn't set the junction correctly ahead of time. This mainly depends on how fast the train is going. Also AI trains have control over junctions if they're close to them... most of the time. So this will also screw you over if you ran a red signal.
  • Hilarity Ensues: There are a lot of things that result in this trope. Multiplayer being the straw that always breaks the camel's back.
    • Artificial Stupidity can always lead to this. It's quite hilarious watching an AI train collide with another AI train despite no reason for doing so, unless you did something you shouldn't have.
    • The download station content can lead to this as well. The cherry topping? Download a random locomotive from the download station and see what it actually looks like in the 3D world. It's not appealing... AT ALL!
    • Even more so with placing signals in your route. They're far more advanced than they were in T:ANE and their complicated behaviors can often lead to hilarious video game rage and even rage quitting, but railroad signals are far more complicated in real life so players get the easy part, but still laughs are imminent.
  • Rail-Car Separation: Can happen any time you click on the coupler icon and click on any of the large red coupler icons on your train. Hell, you can even do this in multiplayer and piss off and possibly derail other players. Always results in Hilarity Ensues.
    • It's worse if you have the coupler breakage HUD session rule enabled for a session. This basically means every time you couple to any rollingstock and locomotives at a speed above what is recommended, then couplers start breaking and the rollingstock and locos affected cannot be used and have to be replaced.
  • Runaway Train: Unlike Train Simulator 2022 by Dovetail games, in Trainz 2019, you can literally have control over limitless amounts of locomotives. That means you can have multiple unmanned trains barreling down the mainline, all the while you're eating popcorn watching the horror as it's about to unfold.
    • Like railworks, few routes really test your ability to manage the various types of brakes available to you. While Cajon Pass isn't necessarily available as a route, you still have Mojave Subdivision which has steep grades itself. The climb and descend from Tehachapi Loop can be exhausting and quite dangerous if you don't manage the throttle and brakes.
    • There's a rare glitch with Portals that can cause AI trains to become completely driverless and unstoppable. The only way to stop those uncontrollable AI trains is to remove them from the route, send them to a derailer, or just let them run until they reach another portal. Pretty scary isn't it? This glitch still exists.
  • Scenery Porn: This trope is the name of the game in this Trainz installment. The game has a lot of impressive graphics, making the game very colorful and unique. In fact, even the locomotives and rollingstock can end up being this.
    • Mojave Sub and Lone Pine Branch are this, especially with high end devices running them. While both routes take place in the State of California (which is a desert), they're still full of scenery porn that will often distract the player far more than it should.
  • Track Trouble: Any route can be this if it's not completely finished.
    • Sometimes, some tracks become obsolete to the point that they are no longer usable and end up becoming unknown assets which can more than likely end up with ridiculous derailments all over the route due to the missing assets. In fact, it's almost impossible to not notice the tracks a route is using are missing dependencies and this often results in a route with no tracks whatsoever.

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